Shadowrun Fifth Edition: Same great Cyberpunk, now with 20% more Neon!

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Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Davin Valkri posted:

Why can't Shadowrun ever be about nice people?

Because it's still more of a '80/'90s dystopian cyberpunk game, rather than a '90/'00s Empire-vs-multitude post-cyberpunk game.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2013 19:05

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:58

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Laphroaig posted:

As a side question: how common are Astral wards in the world? I've got a mage in the party who just took Quickening and I want to be able to describe to him where he can and can't go without losing his karma investment in spells.

Think of them as �special clearance" areas of astral security. For any area where even regular employees would be locked out because the stuff inside needs more security and privacy than letting every Tom, Dick and Harry waltz through, a ward is a reasonable thing to expect. The same goes for any kind of establishment that qualifies as �secure".

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 23:05

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Nyaa posted:

I usually just cast Turn to Goo and pull the ware out.

Edit: The spell is not on 5e, but I am betting its return on the supplement.

It losts its glory half-way through 1st ed. anyway. Back then, before they adressed it, it was pretty much an instakill if when the target (inevitably) failed to resist it.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2013 01:35

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Martello posted:

Just keep playing 4th edition

Ok, I'll stop, I just couldn't resist that one.

Pff! 3E Supremacy! :black101:

Ok, maybe not for Matrix actions, and you had to skip over some of the more stupid splatbooks, but still�

# ¿ Aug 8, 2013 23:12

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Martello posted:

But in 4th Edition they already made it so the hacker (which is what hackers are called, deckers is a stupid word) needed to come with on a run. And everyone having commilinks with agents and poo poo was both realistic and cool and made for a lot of poo poo the hacker could do.

I know I keep bitching about how 4th ed is better without owning the 5th book yet, but so much of the stuff posted here seems like it sucks. I'm not saying the 4e Matrix rules were perfect - in fact they were complicated as hell - but I don't like the sweeping changes they seem to have made in 5e.

Decker is a perfectly cromulent word for someone using a deck, and I still prefer 1st�3d ed where your ability to remote-operate semi-autonomous robot murdering machines were completely disconnected (and in fact inversely proportional) to your ability to destabilise software and subvert firmware. Also, magicking up your meat body was thoroughly and completely pointless for both of those brain-based activities.

:colbert:

# ¿ Aug 13, 2013 17:06

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Poil posted:

Drakes are dual natured, does this mean they are actually useful for something?

Suicide bombing by grounding area-versions of turn to goo through them in a crowded environment?

Oh wait, wrong edition. :ohdear:

# ¿ Aug 21, 2013 16:05

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Cabbit posted:

Like I said, just because somebody had the gall to take a shellfish allergy doesn't mean you should forcibly cram shrimp down their throat every mission.

I don't think anyone has ever said that you should, only that, if people pick weaknesses (which, yes, includes bottom-level attributes), then these should come into play every now and then and trip the players up so they have to find alternate solutions. Otherwise, they are no longer actual weaknesses, and you might as well throw out the whole �buy a positive for a negative� notion and just give people the extra points they want.

The whole argument started with the contention that such disadvantages should never show up as an obstacle in the game because that's somehow mean to the players.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2013 06:35

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Kai Tave posted:

The argument came up because Cirno started asserting that having a Charisma of 1 meant someone was "incapable of having a conversation." Having weaknesses come up in play is fine, "you fail to have a conversation" is bullshit on par with "your Agility is 1 so roll to see if you trip and die while walking across the floor."

He was exaggerating to make the point that, no, having minimum attribute scores are not something that should never come up, or even only rarely, but rather is something that is a daily problem to the character and which should define their lives in general. This as a counter argument to the implication that you could min-max without actually suffering on (or from) the min end of the equation.

And yes, rules-wise, charisma 1 (and no skills) means you can never succeed at any kind of charisma-based challenge. You can still have a conversation, but unless it's under the right circumstances (time, preparation, guidance) any part of that conversation that entails convincing people, lying, fitting in with the crowd, or any similar non-trivial task will automatically fail. To what extent you consider that �incapable of conversing� is just a matter of how you define conversation.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2013 08:55

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Kai Tave posted:

So when he said "at Logic 1 you can't look up YouTube videos and might as well be functionally illiterate," neither of which are actually supported by any text I've been able to find anywhere in either the 4E or 5E books on the subject, I should have realized he was actually just being hyperbolic and not trying to make an actual point, okay.

When a character has Logic 1, any attempt at defaulting the Computer skill automatically fails. This means any test that requires �the use of and understanding of computers and electronic devices.� Such feats are beyond the ability of the character without outside help. He may be able to read (it's included in your native language skill, which you almost never have to roll for, unless you take a negative quality) but he will struggle with or will be outright unable to use the devices that are supposed to provide the text. As the SR4A description explains: ��which in the 2070s is just about everything powered by electricity.� Furthermore, any attempt at defaulting the Data Search skill automatically fails. This entails the �ability to use search engines, databases and other storage tools to track down information online or in computer storage.� When it comes to computer use, he is grandma' in those mid-'90s �introduction to the internet� instructional VHS tapes� except that in his case, the same inability extends to all Logic-linked tests.

So yes, you should have realised that he was being hyperbolic and making an actual point. The two are not mutually exclusive.

quote:

So literally any time anybody in a game you run has a conversation you make them roll skill checks to see if they manage to successfully converse?

Has anyone ever claimed this or are you just presenting a very silly strawman?

quote:

Seriously, the argument that Cirno has been making here, as far as I can tell, is

1). Taking a 1 in a stat means you auto-fail associated skills (okay fine, that's not really in dispute)

2). Therefore if someone takes a 1 in a stat it means that they are functionally incapable of even basic life tasks because of point the first.

No. Therefore, if someone takes a 1 in a stat, it means they are very much defined by that stat and will suffer all kinds of problems that your average person will not because no matter how hard they try, they can't succeed without further aid. Charisma and Logic are just particularly good examples because there are so many �every-day life� tests associated with them in the rules.

�it's much like how someone with Strength 1 is probably well served by using a Rollator when bringing the groceries back from the store.

quote:

So either the GM is making his players roll to chat with the 7-11 clerk and order things off of Amazon.matrix or he isn't. If he is then frankly he's an rear end in a top hat. If he isn't then Cirno's insistence that someone with a 1 in a stat is fundamentally crippled is off-base.

�or the GM is making his players roll for tests when doing something challenging, noting that an attribute of 1 means that such a challenge is automatically beyond the capabilities of the character because they are fundamentally crippled when it comes to these things.

quote:

My point, which nobody has really addressed so far, is why the guy with a 1 Charisma deserves the GM stinkeye while the guy with 2 Charisma is A-OK even if the actual capabilities of Mr. 2 Charisma are, for all practical purposes, not that much better than the guy with 1.

He deserves the GM stinkeye if he doesn't play his attributes, yes. The Charisma 1 guy may saunter up to the pretty lady at the bar and say something suave and fancy� but should be ready for the inevitable fact that he'll end up with a drink in his face because, while it may have sounded good in his head, it didn't really come out that way.

Oh, and just for fun, let's see what the SR4 rule book has to say on skill ratings. Someone with rating 0 is untrained � somethings can be done anyway because you can always default� except that we're talking about people who can't default. In other words, they are worse at these things that people with no formal training at all. The rule book kindly provides examples of this kind of below-zero level of competence.

Athletics → couch potato.
Firearms → never seen a gun.
Technical skill → born before the computer age.
Social skill → hermit.
Academic knowledge skill → mentally damaged.
Street knowledge skill → lives alone in a cave.

quote:

But put a 2 in a stat you plan on never using and nobody starts making bullshit hyperbolic arguments about how that guy's ready to fail at basic life skills

�because he actually has a chance of succeeding at those tests and he's actually just a bit worse than average at it, which we can all relate to. This is unlike the guy with 1 in a stat, who has no chance of success and who is among the worst and most inept people in the world at whatever skill he's being tested on.

quote:

Someone with a 2 in a stat and no associated skills is essentially saying "I probably don't give a poo poo about skill checks here, whatever" just as much as the guy with a 1. So beyond the marginal chance of paper-thin success, what did the 2 Charisma street sam really get for spending those BP/attribute points beyond the Professor Cirno Seal of Approval? Because it seems kind of weird to me that people are treating the dude with a 1 as though that needs to be an active drawback, one that someone's entire character centers around, while the guy with 2 gets a shoulder shrug even though the level at which he's "more functional" is marginal.

It doesn't have to be an active drawback, but it is something the player should actually play because he is exceptionally bad at it, and that should show up in the characterisation. It is also something that the GM should warn about at character creation: �remember, if you ever want to use [long list of skills the character doesn't buy], you will auto-fail � you can prevent this by just upping it to 2, or by buying 1 on all those skills��

quick edit:

Cabbit posted:

It is the 50% progress mark to the bottom, but what the bottom actually represents is not explicitly expanded upon.

As mentioned above, I'd say that the bottom mark (when combined with the rules on defaulting) suggests that you are that �one step worse than untrained�, which is � admittedly very briefly � described in the skill chapter in SR4 at least. Exactly how far you want to push that description and what it means in terms of what the character can and can't do is a different matter, but at least it gives a hint at the level of (in)ability they aiming for at the very lowest end.

Tippis fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Aug 25, 2013

# ¿ Aug 25, 2013 10:54

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Bigass Moth posted:

If you want to be an actual mentally handicapped person there are Negative qualities in Incompetent, Uneducated and Uncouth to help you get there. 1 Logic is not retarded, it just means maybe you aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Yes, you fail a bunch of skill checks for skills you likely don't have and will never use (oh no, Troll meathead can't remember anything from highschool Chemistry, how ever will the group succeed?)

It's not that you fail the skill checks � it's that you can't even begin to try them. So yes, oh no indeed, because the troll meathead can't get out of the room he stupidly got himself stuck in, because no matter how long he tries, he can't think of the idea twist the two exposed wires together to short-circuit the breaker that keeps the door locked. While he tries to get that idea for all eternity, the group will indeed have problems succeeding at� whatever it was they kept the meathead around for.

quote:

Again, nobody questions the Elf Mage with 1 Strength, or the Troll bruiser with 1 Charisma. Suddenly 1 Logic means you can't function in society? I don't think so.

Actually, people question 1 Strength and 1 Charisma for much the same reason, and no, no-one has said that 1 Logic means you can't function in society. What has been said is that Logic 1 means you'll face all kinds of annoying problems in a highly technical society that others can deal with given a bit of time. Often, and at least for every-day tasks, there might be user aids there to help you, but without them and unlike those other people, you're screwed.

That said, the image of an Elf Mage carting around his orichalcum-engraved power-focus walking frame is rather funny.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2013 13:39

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Nyaa posted:

So does a log 1 'retarded' char that buy all log skill at 2 consider 'average'? Retarded average?

How about we also use skill rating to tell what 1-6 mean?

In 4e where the skill have the same range as attribute, 1 is beginner, 2 is novice and 3 is professional so it's not average.

1 = "Has done this a few times, can handle some easy task, some of the time."
3 = "Competent at general skilled task. "Average" skill level for starting character and npc."

Well, from that perspective, attributes are the various combined �skills� at� well� living.

So 3 � �professional� � means you are an average adult who has this whole living thing down pat. 1 / Beginner would then mean having the strength/intellectual ability/charisma of a 5-year old (and not the �awww, cute� kind of 5yo either, but rather the �moooooommmyyyy why can't I have ice-cream waaaaaah!� kind).

# ¿ Aug 25, 2013 17:31

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Mystic Mongol posted:

Attributes are not skills. Do you have a citation for this spurious scale, or are you just talking about the RPG you wish Shadowrun was? A page number, please, from the edition of your choice.

Read the post I quoted, maybe?

# ¿ Aug 25, 2013 18:45

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Mystic Mongol posted:

I did. The rules weren't talking about attributes and talked of a higher level of competence than you were.

Again, read the post I quoted and the context it and my comment were written in.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2013 19:27

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

WarLocke posted:

The wireless rules are just dumb and forced in there to fix the non-problem of giving deckers something to do while on a run (hint: they should be decking).

I don't know. I'd chalk a lot of that up to crippling overspecialisation. If the decker has nothing to do on the run, maybe that's because they've created a character that can only do one thing, and that one thing is only needed part of the time. Solution: build the character so that it's useful at other times as well.

Cyclomatic posted:

So what is the player of the Decker character supposed to do during the hour long combat?

What is the rest of the part supposed to do while the Decker and the DM play the Decker mini game?

For the first one, he can shoot people along with everyone else.
For the second, the same thing they do while the face and the GM play the negotiation game, or the mage and the GM play the astral scouting minigame, or the the rigger and the GM play the mad getaway car chase minigame. If it's during the planning, you take the special character aside while the rest figure out how to make the GM's life miserable; if it's during the run, you deal with it by intercutting the action.

Tippis fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Aug 26, 2013

# ¿ Aug 26, 2013 09:13

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Kai Tave posted:

Shadowrun frequently rewards and encourages overspecialization, especially when it comes to things like hacking. Someone pages back actually said he felt SR5 was better in regards to hacking precisely because it had a higher buy-in and made it so people had to focus more on the hacking side of things if they wanted to be a hacker.

Well, then that's the design flaw they should aim to fix, rather than dive even deeper into the murky water of class-based character designs. All you'll ever end up with if you go down that path is that every character and build option will suffer from the same problem, only in their own specific realm.

There was a reason why, in the older editions, the best combat spell the mage could bring was a Mossberg CMDT. Why bother with the headache (and nosebleed) and fiddling with fetishes and foci and karma drain and spirit aid and on and on� of pumping out high-damage spells, when you can just shoot the guy? As an added bonus, it made you look like something other than a target for the �geek the mage first� rule.

Same went for the decker. Yes, he required a bunch of ridiculously expensive equipment, but that was about it. Other than that, he already had a datajack so a smartgun link, an LMG and learning the covering/suppressing fire rules was all pretty much a rounding error compared to the rest, and it suddenly made him not-a-gimp-in-the-box. Sure, there were some class:ish rules back then too (such as trying to combine rigging and decking leading to massive penalties, or that astral awareness and decking were mutually exclusive abilities) but it was still entirely possible to design well-rounded, multi-purpose characters that never or only rarely were sidelined because �their thing� wasn't going on at the moment.

Again, I don't know. Maybe it's just the fact that class-based systems make me break out in hives. A system that purports to be a non-class system, but then actually is one because of the build requirements are even worse.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2013 10:00

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

ProfessorCirno posted:

The idea that "SHOOT IT UNTIL IT DIES" is the end all be all of combat may have worked in the 80's but it's almost criminally easy to look at how many games, books, movies, or TV shows do otherwise. "The hacker" is pretty much an archtype outside of Shadowrun these days. Precisely because so much stuff is connected to the web in modern times, there's a very easy buy in for most audiences to believe stuff that isn't actually wireless could still be wireless, and thus be hackable - especially in sci-fi settings.

If the only solution is "gun it down" then you in a way still have a class system - it's just that there's two classes, and one is named "Can Do Stuff In Combat 'Cause He Has A Gun," which tells you the name of the other one.

It's not that it's the only solution, but rather that it is an almost universally available solution so there's really no excuse for having �nothing to do in combat�. I'm just saying that many of these supposed problems of (in)activity just come down to artificial limitations that are largely created by people not thinking outside the box of their archetype. The whole notion that �I'm a decker � I only hack. No hacking opportunity = I'm useless� is a wilfully self-imposed problem that is best solved by not imposing it on oneself. It's not really something the game has to (or even should) solve.

quote:

I mean, ideally the GM is offering a lot of stuff for the decker to hack, or outright telling the decker to feel free and "make up" nearby stuff he can hack. THere was an example a dozen (or two or three) pages ago of someone who ran a decker who was doing poo poo like setting off car alarms or causing electrical disruptions and all kinds of stuff during the run or in combat to mess guys up. That's cool stuff!

I'd go so far as to say that this holds true for everyone, not just the decker. It's not like the guy with a gun can't fall into the same trap of just thinking that's the only tool at his disposal and that the scene is just two firing lines behind their respective cover.

Maybe it's better to conceptualise this issue around the distinction of direct and indirect effects. The decker can't directly affect the orc merc squad across the alley because they're not stupid and and run their gear offline. He can still indirectly affect them through the myriad of environmental hazards discussed earlier. Likewise, the street sam can't directly affect the virtual environment, but he can still indirectly mess it up through the use of ewar or, hell, just cutting the power. So maybe the entire trick lies in the GM providing (and the players remembering) all those indirect options?

So it's not really about deckers and having nothing to hack, but about having no direct means of attack, which is solved by having tons of indirect means instead.

e: ^^^ Yes, the rules being a complete incoherent and often illogical mess is another issue, and if anything, it just increases the buy-in, only this time it's for the player rather than the character. Just as his character is �the guy who hacks stuff�, he himself becomes �the guy who has bothered to read the hacking rules�. The question is how to scale all that complexity back to a point where it's still useful and provides plenty of opportunity for fun stuff, without being overly abstracted (and, as mentioned, whether it's actually desirable from the decker player's perspective).

Tippis fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Aug 26, 2013

# ¿ Aug 26, 2013 10:43

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Kai Tave posted:

Frankly I think the conniptions people have over hackers hacking peoples' guns is ridiculous in a game where you could, for the same sort of buy-in, be a mage and melt peoples' poo poo with waves of sorcerous acid or mind-whammy them or maybe just summon a big gently caress-off spirit beforehand if you know you're going to be having a fight or any one of a dozen other crazy things you can just do without having to go through an argument over why someone would leave their gunlink's wi-fi on.

Sure, but that's just down to familiarity, isn't it? Anyone in their right mind can look at their tech toys and say from actual personal experience that, no, I don't need to open up this particular and massive security hole. Then there are the things that just makes no sense � e.g. why does the carbon-fibre mesh embedded in my bones have wifi? Why does it even have any active parts?! It's mesh embedded in bone � that's all! But then again, it works both ways: yay, you've hacked my bone lacing. Good for you. Now what?

Compare this to the universal and obvious answer magic can provide: �it's magic�. The only thing we have to draw on is fairy-tales where it's countered by more magic, a strong will, or maybe occasionally iron. I suppose Earthdawn somewhat got around this by adding in a bunch of restrictions on how and when magic could be used. Even magicians had to consider whether something was possible � did they have the right matrices and how corrupted was the area?

quote:

I think a better way to look at it rather than "direct and indirect" is "declarative and permissive." It's the problem with spellcasters and fighters in D&D...a fighter has to ask the GM "can I do this, can I do that?" and play 20 questions in order to find out whether he can do something, what it'll take him, what his penalties are, etc. Meanwhile the Wizard simply casts a spell and gets to do poo poo. Pit appears out of nowhere? Floor turns to mud? Suddenly tentacles appear everywhere? Sure, why not.

The hacker operates purely as a permissive character...you have to figure out what around you is there to hack, is it wireless-active or not, no?, okay then what is wireless enabled, can I hack it to do [X]?, no?, okay then what can I hack it to do, etc. etc.

�this, however, I agree with fully. I suppose some of the balance is supposed to come from magic having a cost. Yes, you can do whatever you want if you are willing to take the drain or pay the karma (or N� for materials)� The thing that gives you permission is your personal preference as far as having your head explode or not.

Of course, from that perspective, decking becomes even worse: not only is it permissive, but you also have to pay similar penalties and costs to the ones that are supposed to keep the magician in check. Yes, once we've established that there is something you could hack, you now have to make it happen, waking up all kinds of security mechanisms in the process and getting slapped with black ice because you happened to roll an awful amount of 1:s.

So, new question: what would happen � mechanically, logics-wise, and gameplay-wise � if some of those penalties were removed? Would it allow for more direct attacks (or at least direkt-like), or would it just make the rules more bearable, which would be a win in and of itself?

# ¿ Aug 26, 2013 11:33

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Gort posted:

Hacking a specific object on the fly should be no more difficult, rules-wise, than firing a bullet at them. What do you want to do, OK, roll your hacking, they roll their firewall, works or doesn't work.

There's no reason doing cool stuff should be gated behind multiple actions or confusing rules just because of the archetype you're using.

�but on the other hand, doing it the quick and dirty way should be just as obvious to the surrounding as rattling off half a belt of ammo or conjuring up huge fireballs. So maybe that's the solution: yes, you can just directly go after something, but it will brickwall every overwatch and alarm trigger in the vincinity and now they're coming for you very quickly (unless you stick around and meticulously and virtually clean the place up, which you won't have time to do).

Kai Tave posted:

And on the third hand, just how powerful are the designers judging things like "subvert someone's gun" to be when stacked up against "make someone dead" anyway?

Come to think of it, doesn't the same odd balance exist with magic as well? Frying someone with a [whatever]ball is usually hellalot easier and more efficient than trying to subvert their actions with domination or illusion spells.

Maybe it's just the age old hatred against incapacitating attacks that has come to life in a slightly new form. Everyone can kind of live with their characters being blown up, but not being allowed to do something is immensely unsatisfying and frustrating.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2013 13:47

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

We just houseruled the hell out of the grenade damage rules to where they made sense to us.

1. Floors and ceilings are already included in the damage, so if anything, you just get a damage reduction if you encounter them outdoors or in exceptionally high-ceiling rooms.
2. The damaging bouncing is already counted as omni-directional and this, too, is included in the damage. So you only ever track one shock wave.
3. If the base damage code is physical, we're dealing with a shrapnel-based grenade unless we can think of a very good reason why it wouldn't be. If the damage code is high enough, the shrapnel just goes through and/or embeds itself in the walls � no bounce.

This has followed us, with some minute adjustments, since SR2 and there has (unfortunately) been very little reason to change it.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2013 09:28

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

BenRGamer posted:

Well, that's kind of the point. Nobody would hire just some random dude with a truck for black ops, would they?

No, but they would hire him for a quick snatch'n'grab of the CEO's daughter (so the corp security is busy gunning down the schmucks while the other team sneaks into the facility to grab some really compromising material from the CEO's own computer).

It's a fairly easy problem to solve: just play 2nd Ed.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2013 00:44

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Mystic Mongol posted:

Or we can play professional criminals in this professional crime RPG about the most elite mercenaries in the world.

Didn't you start with one million nuyen at resources A in second edition?

Yes, but what did a million N� buy you? One or two tricked-out cars and some drones for the rigger. A deck for the decker. A full set of wires for the street sam. It also left you low on skills and attributes and you couldn't be magically active and/or metahuman.

code:

Prio  Race       Magic                 Attr  Skill   Res.
 A    Metahuman  Human full             30    40     1M N�
 B    Human      Human adept/Meta full  24    30     400k N�    
 C    Human      Meta adept             20    24     90k N�
 D    Human      -                      17    20     5k N�
 E    Human      -                      15    17     500 N�

�so picking resources A didn't really mean that you started off at the top � more that you were a well-off amateur with more toys then sense or knowledge, unless it was very specific. Of course, you could always go 40 sp/24 ap/90k and start off competent, but then you'd be down on your luck and without any kind of remotely fancy gear or contacts.

Cabbit posted:

So.. wait, you want to play expendable shmucks that get in over their head and die? Gee, I can't imagine why those sort wouldn't have half a million nuyen worth of cybernetics or drones.

It's no different than going from rescuing the farmer's daughter from goblins to rescuing the princess from a dragon. Except maybe that in SR, you are the goblins and the dragon, respectively. And no, I want to play a crime saga � from the first fumbling steps on the street to the blackops strike on the orbital delta growth labs.

Hatchetman started out by getting in over his head, after all�

# ¿ Sep 13, 2013 11:37

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

H posted:

What do you think would be a better tool for quickly stripping a dead NPC of cyberware: Mini-welder or Monofilament chainsaw?

Per Sin City, a katana to make for more easily transported bits, and then probably some kind of fancy nanobot bath. Or just resurrect the older-edition version of Turn to Goo.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 19:05

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

H posted:

The character concept I'm considering is a street doc (5 points in Biotech Group) who can spend 2-3 minutes after each fight scanning and stripping the most expensive pieces of cyberware off dead mooks. It's a total smash and grab surgery that shouldn't take too much time/logistics. My goal is to end each shadowrun with a bag of bloody cyber-parts that I can re-assemble later.

(My solution for the Nuyen crunch)

Yeah� I'd say that unless you've been fighting fish on a Norwegian cyber-trawler, 2�3 minutes won't be enough. Maybe to lop of the relevant bits and bring them home for processing, but certainly not to strip the actual cyberware.

CMS posted:

Why a fancy nanobot bath instead of a steel drum full of beetles?

Now that I consider it, a forensic entymologist isn't likely to be out of work long in the Sixth World.

Because unless it's very crude (read: cheap) purely mechanical implants or some similarly obsolete junk, they'll be attached to the nervous system and/or embedded in immunosuppressant casings, so you need something of the same calibre to detach them. Beetles will just eat the casing and wires and make a general mess of things, because it'll all be close enough to their regular fare.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 20:09

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Cabbit posted:

Seems like a good idea now, until you open the drum and are accosted by a swarm of beetles with wired reflexes.

I take my answer back and yield to this one.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2013 20:11

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Piell posted:

Well presumably he's wearing clothes under that jacket so he could get armored clothes (which are almost impossible to spot as armored) under his leather jacket and get 2 more points of armor and look and feel exactly the same, so he should probably do that.

Yes, but that makes him a sissy and no-one at the biker bar will buy him any beer.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2013 21:10

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Piell posted:

Because he's wearing clothes?

Because he's wearing armour rather than a proper wife-beater.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2013 21:12

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

�in fact, that was the old lore explanation why having a Vehicle Control Rig installed mauled your matrix initiative and made you a useless decker: because it was directly hooked into motor system of the brain to intercept the signals that would normally go to your muscles and send them to the vehicle instead. Cyberdecks and matrix interactions, on the other hand, specifically suppressed those signals so that matrix interactions became a purely cognitive matter.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2013 21:45

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Laphroaig posted:

Haha. Making your car horn play "La Cucaracha" gets you an overwatch score.

This is as it should be.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2013 18:33

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

I don't think it ever changed (or was at all described) in later editions, but ye olde Seattle Sourcebook rather described Snohomish as a neo-rural community with lots of greenery and pastures and the like. Just raise your goats there, and do it with (high life)style.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2013 21:49

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Doc Dee posted:

How much essence would a skilljack, skillwire, smartlink, and heavy weapons mount eat up? I guess an armed goat could stand to "suffer" from cyberpsychosis

Having been around goats, I would strongly suggest a remote-triggered cranial bomb as well, for when (not if) things go wrong.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2013 00:27

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Doc Dee posted:

I dunno, I kinda like the bahari. What could be so bad about a carnivorous manatee that can shapeshift into a metahuman form??

It's owlbears all over again. :downsgun:

# ¿ Nov 29, 2013 00:20

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Kai Tave posted:

Yeah, back in 2E there was no such thing as Physads who could use their innate powers to be better hackers or socialites or whatever. If you played an adept then you were some sort of punchyman or athletic dude.

The problem with Adepts in 2E is that adept powers cost way more in terms of power points than the cybernetic/bioware equivalents did in essence. Like, I suppose the idea was "oh, but cyberware costs money too!" but at chargen that's way less of an issue. For example, Muscle Replacement cyberware boosts both your Strength and Quickness by 1 and costs you 1 Essence. To achieve the same effect using adept powers in 2E it costs:

[�]

Now this is all just looking at the corebook...later supplements added some new adept powers, including things that cyberware couldn't easily replicate (though not too many, and not all were equally useful) as well as ways to discount power point costs by taking geasa...but later supplements also added more augmentations as well as improved cyber/bioware grades, so adepts never really moved beyond also-ran status. Adepts were the cool concept that people loved in theory but in practice were kind of a disappointment.

To elaborate, the saving grace for physads in 2E (and even 1E) was initiation. It was a kind of middle-way of the old linear-warriors/quadradic-wizards formula in that these were warrior-wizards that had access to the same, potentially unlimited progression potential that magic opened up.

Yes, at chargen, the 6 magic points of an adept bought less than 5.9 essence for a cybermonster, but add in a few levels of initiation and suddenly you had something that not even deltaware could touch. Maybe you could sacrifice 1 essence/magic to slap in a datajack, a smartlink, and some similar �essentials�, but that was really all that was needed. Physads could also get decent initiation rebates since many geasa were less crippling for them than they would be for a full magician. And then there was the ability to bind and use foci of various kinds and even some forms of meta-magic�

It was a long-haul concept that could evolve into something that Marvel would look at an deem a bit over the top, but right out of the gate, they could definitely be a bit underwhelming. They were still punchymen, but they could push that niche farther than any other build could go.

Of course, in 2E (and 1E too, iirc) the really important part was that the melee rules created an interesting bypass for the initiative rules. Firearms characters pretty much always needed initiative boosting to stand a chance; melee characters much less so. All you needed was a high skill, and it took care of everything.

In the older editions, all melee tests were opposed test, and the loser took damage � everything was aikido� somehow. This meant that the old martial-arts master would make mince-meat out of the chipped up samurai, because when the latter came rolling in with their 4 complex actions per turn and used those actions to punch the old man, he'd win all those opposed test and do damage to the cyber guys. The faster they attacked, the quicker they died. Now add in the ridiculously high (at the time) melee dice pools that a physad could obtain, and the fact that they could often save power points by not going for reaction enhancement, and they would get downright scary in close quarters. That mainly left the universal problems of getting into close quarters in a firearms world to begin with�

Tippis fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Dec 2, 2013

# ¿ Dec 2, 2013 17:15

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Kai Tave posted:

Yeah, Initiation could give you theoretically unlimited extra power points, but

A). there were no rules for Initiation in the 2E corebook, and

B). Initiation could still cost a boatload of karma unless you cut it through things like signing on with a magical coven (which gave you restrictions on things you could or couldn't do) or undergoing ordeals (which gave you potential points of failure).

Oh, sure, but then that held true for the regular magicians as well so their part of the quadratic-wizard equation was lost as well. On the other hand, the Grimoires were pretty much the first supplements released for those two editions so it was remedied reasonably quickly.

As for the karma cost, wasn't basically the standard split back then? You went the N� route or the karma route, but whichever you picked, �costs a boatload� would be the correct way to describe it.

quote:

Also just to add insult to injury the first level of Initiation actually didn't add anything to your magic rating at all.

True enough. �All� it gave you was metamagic. All of it. Not one trick per level as in later editions, so that was a pretty neat bump in power (if not actual �powers�) already there.

quote:

It's not that it was impossibly onerous to do or anything but you were still sort of playing catch-up, especially depending on which powers you bought at the outset. The equivalent of a street sam's Wired 2 could cost you all of your 6 power points at chargen compared to 3 essence (without geasa, of course, but looking through the sourcebook that introduced Initiation I can't actually see anything about voluntarily accepting geasa to reduce power point costs, maybe that came in a later book) and in 2E initiative was even more important since multiple action passes happened all at once rather than "everyone goes, then everyone with a second pass goes, etc."

True, but as mentioned, that was cancelled out by the way melee combat worked. It sucked for anyone trying to build a gun adept, sure, but the power and foci set back then heavily skewed them towards melee anyway so doing a gun build was deliberately inefficient to begin with.

Also, the costly part in trying to replicated wire reflexes with physad power was the reaction increase, which mattered less than the dice and those were only slightly more expensive, points-wise�

# ¿ Dec 3, 2013 00:50

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Zereth posted:

We were talking about 2e, where I believe this was not the case, you just moved X per action you spent moving. So being wired to the gills meant you could move much, much faster.

That depended on the kind of movement you were going for and on a technicality in the wording, and it wasn't nearly as bad as it is often portrayed. The key sentence that everyone missed was that �characters with multiple actions may run only in one of those combat phases�. The wording (and a pretty silly GM that allows walking to be faster than running) would conceivably allow for multiple walk actions in a turn, but even then, you would have had to roll an initiative of 31+ to get more walk actions than the standard running multiplier� except that a running character could get a running test to increase their effective quickness.

Even using the walk-movement exploit, being wired (as in reflexes) to the gills only added a maximum of 24 above base on your initiative roll if you rolled all sixes, so getting 31+ to get a fourth opportunity to walk was rare in and of itself, and again, someone rolling a decent amount of successes on a running test would keep up.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 16:28

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Well, hey, at least in the olden days, it was (very) marginally useful for shooting civilians and the occasional paracritter� having essentially two extra successes when ye olde target numbers started creeping up into double digits was handy at times.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 18:25

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Zereth posted:

I don't see what's preventing you from using non-run movement options on your other actions?

The GM who sensibly says that no, walking is not faster than running.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 18:49

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Gort posted:

By Shadowrun canon, are wired characters supposed to run faster than normals? I swear I read some fiction way back in 2e or so where some guy goes on a super-fast run when he activates his wires.

It happened a lot in the books, yes, because that was probably the least read sentence in the entire rule book and because it just sounded cool in fiction even though it was mechanically bonkers and dubious.

But then we got raptor legs and move-by-wire systems and various other athletics and movement ware so it didn't really matter any more�

# ¿ Dec 4, 2013 19:05

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Doc Dee posted:

Is it not okay to be in the gray area between Mirrorshades and Pink Mohawk?

I'm gonna make a hardass ex-SWAT guy with a 'wared up dog

But I'm also gonna give that dog a commlink and linguasoft so he can use txtspeak.

I suppose there could be rose-coloured mirrorshades, where you dream back to previous editions and remember them as much better and cooler than they actually were�

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 03:41

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Deviant posted:

Where does "NO BATMAN VILLAINS." fall along the pink-mirrorshades spectrum?

You don't see a corpse, that guy isn't dead.

I'd say that it is only barely outside of the deep pink zone. There's still enough variation and leeway in the silliness available for them to not be all-mirriorshades. I mean, the classic SR opponent isn't even necessarily a villain, and the mirrorshade spectrum just means they'll sit safely in their CEO and high political offices and scheme, without the characters ever being able to touch them until every piece of the puzzle is in place.

�No batman villain� still leaves the full spectrum of, say, Bond villains, which can be� ehm� pretty outrageous and silly too. I'd say that many of the canonical badguys fit well into that kind of categorisations, even edging towards Batman territory since they're backed by magic and various paranormal phenomena. Beyond that, they just need a fuckton of henchmen and an underground lair� and which A+ corp doesn't have access to that?

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 17:16

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:58

Tippis: Mar 21, 2008; It's yet another day in the wasteland.

Deviant posted:

I should have been more clear. "No Batman Villains!" is an actual quote spoken by multiple members of the group just prior to comedy-murdering someone.

Ah� were the talking about themselves or the victim?

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 17:22

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